


twin high maintenance machines

by thisnightsrevels



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Bee Says Cash Money, Bisexual Aaron Minyard, Bisexual Kevin Day, Bisexuals In Crisis, Developing Relationship, Friendship, Healing, Kevin Calls Wymack Dad, Kevin Day Grows A Spine (The Saga), M/M, Parental David Wymack, Seth Gordon Lives, She's hip w the kids, Slow Burn, father/son bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26958238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisnightsrevels/pseuds/thisnightsrevels
Summary: Healing was never going to be easy, but maybe together they could find a wayKevin and Aaron have grown sick of living under Andrews thumb, and slowly they're coming to realise that there are better things to live for beyond the bottle he shoves in their hand.
Relationships: Kevin Day & Aaron Minyard, Kevin Day/Aaron Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Nicky Hemmick/Erik Klose
Comments: 20
Kudos: 100
Collections: AFTG Big Bang 2020





	twin high maintenance machines

It’s getting rough again. 

Though, in his defense, it wasn't like it'd ever been easy. 

In the time since Rikos… passing… Kevin wasn’t sure if he’d gone from bad to worse or just backwards.

(Though backwards suggests he’d ever really made progress in the first place)

Beyond a cover up tattoo and one semi-acknowledgement about his ‘skiing accident’, he’d done nothing to actually deal with the events of the last year and a half.

(Let alone the rest of his life)

It’s just easier to push it all down and forget it.

After all, Kevin has spent his whole life ignoring and forgetting. 

Ignoring what Riko did to Jean. 

Forgetting what the sound of screaming sounded like. 

He's spent so long forcing himself to forget and ignore all that happened around him that now there was nothing to _forget_ he was constantly left in the lurch. 

He kept catching himself turning to say something to the empty space next to him, only to have to stop himself, to remind himself that there just… wasn’t anyone there anymore.

Anyone who had once been there had long since abandoned him.

Andrew promised to help him and left him an addict. 

Neil wormed his way in and left him indebted to the mob. 

Riko betrayed him and left him without a left hand. 

Jean had moved to California and _left him behind_ and now Kevin is on his own and everyone expects him to be able to deal with everything and he couldn't do it then and he can't now and it’s all getting too much again and he’s trying he’s trying he’s trying but everything was just too much too big too fast and _he was never supposed to face the world without his brother what the fuck what the fuck what the_ \- 

It’s all just a bit easier with a drink in his hand.

____________

Aaron watches Kevin spiral into a panic attack in the corner with a detached sort of interest, and debates whether or not he should go over and help.

It would be the right thing to do, after all.

That was what would be expected of any decent human being.

Andrew certainly wouldn’t.

More likely than not, Andrew is probably too busy fucking around on the roof with Josten to care what’s going on with Kevin anymore.

Even if he was here, he’d probably just berate Kevin or watch as Josten called him a coward before throwing in his own insult and leaving.

Or else he’d just shove another bottle in Kevins hand and watch as his supposed best friend drank himself into an early grave because God forbid Andrew actually give a shit about anyone else for once.

Onscreen, an obnoxious unskippable cut-scene plays, redirecting Aarons attention away from his panicking roommate and back to the screen. After an eternity of watching poorly-rendered characters deliver poorly written dialogue, the actual gameplay started.

Aaron jabs away at his controller, eyes darting around the screen as he tries not to get killed again. He’d been stuck on this level for days and he’d gotten thisclose to finishing it four times now but all he can hear is Kevin hyperventilating in the corner and-

And he’s fucking died again.

Kevin lets out a choked sob in the corner.

Aaron slams down his controller and turns around to face Kevin, ready to snap at him to shut up until he sees the death grip Kevin has on the edge of the table.

Guilt, then shame, flashes across Aarons conscience, followed quietly by the memory of Bees voice reminding him that he is not always at fault for others' emotions.

Kevin is having a panic attack, that much is clear.

His chest is heaving as his thousand-yard-stare bores a hole in the scuffed tabletop.

Aaron tries to ignore him for a moment longer.

Guilt wars with the selfish desire to finish his game, but-

But he knows exactly what Kevin is going through.

Feels it keenly when he wakes up in the mornings.

Remembers it all too well from times when the night is just a bit too dark and dawn just a bit too far away.

Guilt wins out and Aaron pauses the game ignoring the cut-scene as it drags on for the fifth time in favour of walking over to Kevin.

He’s about to grab his shoulder, shake him out of it, but he refrains, a combination of medical training and personal experience running through his mind.

Unexpected touch has never boded well for any Fox.

  
  


Still, it’s not like he could exactly leave the guy like this.

“Kevin?”

The man in question doesn’t stop his frantic breathing, though he jerks his chin in Aarons direction to indicate he had heard.

This next bit he could deal with, this was thoroughly covered in emergency responder training.

This he could manage.

“Kevin I’m going to need you to listen to me, can you do that?”

Kevin's head nods jerkily up and down momentarily before his breathing rapidly increases.

Aaron purses his lips a moment, and then lets his training take over.

There was no space to worry over Kevins opinion of him and vice versa then, that could be dealt with later.

“Kevin,” he starts again. “Kevin, I’m going to need you to listen to me, okay? You’re going to take a nice deep breath there for me”

Kevin shakes his head, tears flowing freely down his face now, chest heaving.

“Kevin,” repeated Aaron sternly. “Listen to me. Big breath in and hold it”

Kevin chokes but manages a breath in and holds it for a second before returning to his spasmodic gasping.

“That’s better,” says Aaron encouragingly. “Again, longer this time. You need to focus.”

Wrong choice of words, it seems. Kevin's whole being shakes for a moment, as though fighting back a flinch. 

Right. Don’t repeat that one.

“Kevin,” he tries again. “Kevin, look at me.” 

Kevin turned his face towards Aaron, but kept his stare fixed on the table top.

“Kevin.”

Kevin turned his gaze to look at him.

_Finally._

“Deep breath in.”

Kevin inhaled shakily,

“And out?”

He exhaled.

“That’s it now, in… out… in… out… better”

Slowly, so slowly, Kevins breathing returned to normal.

It struck Aaron in that moment just how young Kevin was (how young they both were). Loathe though he was to admit it, he spent so much time looking up to Kevin that he forgot there were only a few months between them.

Kevin breathed out shakily.

“Thanks.”

Aaron shifted awkwardly. 

They never covered “what to do after you help your star athlete roommate down from a panic” in first responder training.

Kevin opened his mouth to say something else and Aaron cut him off quickly - “Your hyperventilating was getting annoying, next time die quieter” - before storming off into the bathroom to have his own little freak out.

Dealing with emergencies was always the easy part. 

He’d talked about it with some of his fellow med students, the kind of weird void-state of calm that comes over you in moments like this. As though your training takes control over and any panic is put away neatly in a little box to deal with later. Katelyn told him once about how she’d stepped on a nail in the garden, and how it wasn’t until she’d pulled it out, put away her wheelbarrow, walked inside, located a first aid kit, washed her hands, washed down her foot, cleaned and patched the wound, washed out her croc and the shower and disposed of the rubbish from the plaster that she’d calmly walked upstairs to her bedroom, laid down, and then (only then) did she very quietly go into shock. Who had time for hysteria when there was work to be done?

This was the hard bit, afterwards when your brain started processing events again.

Katelyn said she’d gone into shock and promptly fallen asleep for five hours.

Aaron didn’t think he’d do anything so dramatic, but he could feel his brain splitting in half - one part begging him to go to sleep for a bit, the other going a mile a minute and reliving every detail.

He slumped down on the closed toilet, suddenly drained.

Kevin.

Kevin.

Kevin?

Kevin.

Unbidden, thoughts of his mother swam to the surface.

Or, rather, what life had been like for Aaron under his mother. 

There’d never been anyone else in the house who cared enough to help Aaron out of a panic attack, so he learned quickly not to let himself get to that point. Pack it down, deal with it never.

That had been the plan.

That is until he’d made a throw away comment about this habit to Betsy and she’d given him a very concerned look and asked him if he knew that wasn’t healthy.

She’d given him That Look, the one that said she wasn’t mad (she’d never be mad) but she was so _very_ disappointed in him, and suggested maybe he work on opening up those boxes.

Easier said than done but he was trying.

______________

Kevins chest hurt.

It wasn’t that it had been a long time since last he’d had a panic attack - in truth, as Rikos anniversary approached they’d been getting more and more frequent - but rather that this one had happened in front of Aaron.

_Stupid._

Andrew had made it perfectly fucking clear that there would be no pity for him in Fox Tower. If Kevin was going to waste time hyperventilating he could damn well do it on his own time.

That’s all he ever did anyways, wasn’t it? He just wasted peoples time with his petty drama, always had, even back in the Nest.

Weakness was not tolerated in the Nest, regardless of who your parents were.

The one time Kevin had burst into tears on the court, they’d been running drills and practising for about eight hours straight and he’d felt like he was about to vomit. When the Master had seen his tears, he lifted his cane and struck Kevin across the backs of his knees until he’d collapsed to the floor.

He had been nine at the time.

He was eleven when he started waking up in a screaming terror, his mind forcing him to relive the memory of seeing Nathan Wesninski slicing into a dying man's flesh over and over and over and over and-

Riko had put up with this behaviour once. 

The second time it happened, he’d sat on Kevins chest and held a pillow over his face until he’d stopped screaming.

Point is, Kevin learned from an early age that nobody cared about wether or not he could handle all that was thrown at him. Expressing weakness only lead to misery. Better to force down the memory than allow others to use it against you.

So when Aaron had not only shown concern, but helped him through a panic attack, Kevin hadn’t known what to do with himself.

It was… nice?

It was certainly odd, in its own way.

Kevin wasn’t actually as blinkered as his teammates thought, he did pay attention to things other than Exy.

So, while he knew at surface level that Aaron was studying to be a nurse, it was the kind of thing that just sort of became one of the things that made up who Aaron was. It just wasn’t something Kevin actively remembered every time he looks at Aaron.

Maybe that was why he’d been so thrown off earlier when Aaron switched into First Aid Mode.

He’d been like a completely different person.

Indeed, if Kevin hadn't been so deep into his own hysteria he might have laughed at the difference between the surly blond he shared a dorm with and the professional air of the medical student who’d helped him come down.

It just goes to show, Kevin muses, that despite spending almost all of their time outside of classes together, he doesn’t really know his roommates all that well.

Like, he knew that Nicky was studying… marketing? Business? And that he was allergic to… something. Or maybe that was Andrew. 

Huh.

Maybe he knew less than he thought.

He’d lived with the cousins for two and a half years, and with Neil for one, he should know them better than this.

Maybe it was a side-effect from growing up with… him.

When you spend every second of your life right next to another person, it gets hard to tell where one person ends and another begins. Even when Jean had joined their duo and made it a trio, he had just sort of.. blended into the pair until it was as if they had always been a three. You sort of… lose part of yourself. The part that makes you _you_.

It’s part of why Kevin had attached so quickly to Andrew when he’d first joined the Foxes. 

He needed someone to… balance him out.

He’d thought that Andrew would be able to be that for him.

_Idiot._

__________________________

After that, they don’t really interact again for a while.

At least, not directly.

Aaron doesn’t realise he’s making a point of avoiding Kevin (because what the fuck do you even say to someone after you talk them down? ‘Hey there bud, hope you’re holding up well after you had a meltdown in our kitchen last week’?) until he stumbles downstairs at some point in, well, in the wee hours to use the bathroom and catches sight of a soft warm light spilling out of the kitchen door.

Figuring Nicky had stayed up to Skype Erik and forgotten to turn it off before he went to bed, Aaron did his business, before grumbling quietly and ambling into the kitchen, intending to shut off the little light over where Neil kept the electric kettle (because apparently his British sensibilities were far too delicate to boil water on the hob) when he saw the hunched over form of Kevin, lit by the eerie blue light of his laptop screen and busily typing away.

Aaron paused, one hand still reaching for the small light switch.

“Uh,” he started. “Kevin?”

Kevin hummed in acknowledgement and kept typing.

“Kevin.”

Without moving his eyes from the screen, Kevin tilted his face towards Aaron.

It was way too early for this.

“Kevin!”

At this Kevin let out an annoyed ‘what’ and finally tore his gaze away from the laptop screen, blinking in the sudden darkness. 

For his part, Aaron just sort of gestured at the dark kitchen.

Realisation dawned on Kevins face.

“When did it get so dark?”

Aaron blinked.

“About eight hours ago,” he said slowly. “It’s three in the morning. What the fuck are you still doing up?”

Kevin shifted in the hard kitchen sit and Aaron could hear his stiff joints cracking from where he stood, now awkwardly leaning against the counter.

“I was writing this essay on T.K Whitaker and the 1956 Programme for Economic Expansion when it just kind of… clicked… and suddenly I was able to just bang it out,” Kevin explained, wincing as he flexed his aching left hand and cracked eight of the knuckles. “I really didn’t want to stop and I guess time got away from me.”

Aaron squinted at him, silently cursing his shitty eyesight and the glasses he’d forgone upstairs.

He’d gone to bed around ten, and Kevin had already been tapping away at his laptop for two hours at that point. If he’d been typing this whole time…

“How fucking long is your essay.”

Kevin huffed.

“It’s supposed to be around ten pages long.”

Aaron nodded.

“And how long have you it now?”

Kevin paused to check his page count.

“Eight.”

“How the fuck have you been typing for over twelve hours and you’ve only got eight fucking pages.”

Kevin shrugged expressively, then winced as his shoulder cracked audibly.

“I think I got distracted by the table and lost a little time.”

“What do you mean you ‘lost time’, Kevin? What the fuck does that even mean?”

Kevin, for his part, looked genuinely perplexed.

“Does that not happen to everyone?”

Aaron really wished he’d just stayed in bed, to hell with his bladder.

Kevin seemed to interpret his frustrated silence as an invitation to explain.

“You know, like, when you’re, like - you’re not zoned out, you’re aware of what’s going on, but you just sort of… slip… and then time just kind of… goes away for a while.”

“I’m even more confused than before you explained and-” here he held up a hand to stop Kevin before he could go off on another rambling explanation “- it’s three in the morning, go to bed.”

Aaron flicked off the light, and, ignoring Kevins squawk of protest, turned and fumbled his way back upstairs to his bed, hearing Kevin scramble to shut off his laptop and trundle off to where Nicky had set up the fold out bed several hours prior.

There was probably something in Kevins comment about ‘losing time’ that should be concerning, but that was a problem for Daytime Aaron to deal with.

_____________________________________

Reaching down to untie the shoes he was still wearing, Kevin wondered at the expression on Aaron's face when he’d mentioned losing time.

(Granted, given that he’d not been wearing his glasses, any expression Aaron had was filtered through grumpy squinting, but still)

It wasn’t something he really thought about.

Sometimes, his body would just… stop for a little while and his mind would wander off. 

He didn’t mind too much, it gave him time to work through things, to plan stuff out for practises and just kind of take a break from whatever was going on around him.

It was nice.

Of course, he never meant to do it, it just kind of… happened. 

If he was alone, he’d just wait for it to run its course.

If he was around people - well, to be perfectly honest, they either beat him or thought him a prick.

(Though, thankfully, these days the latter was far more common than the former)

Heaving his stiff joints under the thin duvet, Kevin wondered again at Aarons reaction.

He knew Riko never ‘lost time’ like that, but after a few months of living in the Nest, Jean had started doing it too, though asides from him, he’d never heard anyone else mention it, not in the same way.

Matt zoned out on occasion, but he said that was the ADHD, and occasionally he’d catch Neil deep in thought, but whenever he asked them about it, Matt laughed it off, saying it was just his brain moving too fast for his body, that the rest of him just needed to catch up, and Neil would just glare at him suspiciously and leave the room. 

Kevin pulled himself out of his thoughts long enough to try forcibly relax his body, bracing himself for the inevitable pain that came with releasing the tension from his aching joints.

Finally relaxed, (or as much as he could be) he became aware of the bone-deep exhaustion that had been lurking at the back of his mind for several hours.

Unbidden, Aarons voice rose to his mind. 

The memory of Aarons voice shouting at him to - wait no, that had been Andrew, Aaron didn’t shout at Kevin (to him yes, but not at him).

Sleepily, Kevin groaned inwardly at the thought of the berating he’d get were Aaron to find out he’d, however unintentionally, mixed up the twins. 

It wasn’t as if their voices were even anything alike, Andrew with the beginning of a smokers rasp to his words sounded nothing like Aaron.

As he drifted off to sleep, Kevin was left with the vague thought that Aaron actually had quite a nice voice.

________________

Time did as it was wont to do, and passed.

Between midterm exams and preparations for the Sudden Death matches, the Foxes suddenly found themselves with barely time to breathe, let alone socialise.

So, when Easter comes and they’re left with two weeks of relative free time, it’s Dan who suggested they all watch a film together as some kind of team bonding exercise.

The first year, Jack,had made a derisive noise and a rude comment about Dans intelligence before being politely, but very firmly, shown out of the room by Renee for ‘a little chat’.

By the time they’re all settled on a film to watch (some new release, Kevin didn’t recognise the name) Renee had finished her ‘little chat’ with Jack, and the pair had rejoined the group, the latter looking spooked but untouched. Renee sat in the chair Andrew had saved for her and produced her crochet project out of her hoodie pocket and resumed her work, content to be in the presence of the other Foxes rather than watching the film.

Kevin for his part, didn’t particularly care for it either. 

He’d wanted to watch ‘War of the Buttons’, but Neil and the cousins had quickly shouted over him, proclaiming it to be boring, nonsensical and a waste of time. 

Kevin, who genuinely wants to watch it, and moreover, to show it to the other Foxes in an attempt to share his interests and actually make some kind of connection, was rather taken aback at how negatively the others reacted, and in no time at all it was just another round of ‘Isn’t Kevin Such An Asshole’.

Shame pricks at his eyes and he sits back in his chair.

A tiny voice pipes up at the back of his mind, that it wasn’t fair of the others to treat him like that, but is quickly crushed by a much louder voice telling him to shut up and do as he was told.

Some childish part of him was truly upset at the cousins reactions to his suggestion. Like, they’d already sat through it with him once (though Neil had complained the whole way through and Nicky spent the entire time on his phone ignoring the TV). If they didn’t like the film that was fine, he got that it wasn’t to everyone's taste, but they didn’t have to be so… so _mean_ about it.

He sits back into his corner of the couch, resolutely ignoring the glare off Nicky's phone screen next to him and the quiet whispers of Neil and Andrew where Andrew is curled up half on top of Neil on one of the beanbags.

The film starts, some loud action-esque thing with harsh explosions and excessive cleavage shots.

Even if he’d wanted to, Kevin wouldn’t have been able to follow it because even his quiet request for subtitles had been shouted down. Without them, he found it nigh on impossible to actually understand what was being said, regardless of what language it was in.

Left with no other real option, and not wanting to cause a scene by leaving, Kevin lets his gaze drift until he was gazing in the vague direction of the top right corner of the telly and let his mind wander.

_______________

From his vantage point in the remaining beanbag, Aaron watched as Kevin seemed to check out of reality.

It was weird to watch.

It wasn’t that he didn’t blink, like how people tended to forget to blink when they zoned out, but at the same time it wasn’t as though he was aware of when he did.

He finds himself recalling the time he’d found Kevin in the kitchen at an unholy hour, still hammering away at an essay.

_“I think I got distracted by the table and lost a little time.”_

Was this that?

Certainly, as the film drags on it seems that Kevin has no real awareness of time moving on without him,rather he just keeps staring off into the middle distance.

Aaron can’t really blame him.

The film sucked, some overhyped amalgamation of vaguely attractive people running around blowing shit up with zero regard for the impact on human life while still claiming to be the good guys.

Pulling out his phone, he sent a text to Kevin, partly because he wanted someone to hear his (in his opinion) witty comment and partly because he wanted to see if anything would pull him out of his weird void-state.

Across the room, he heard the water-drop sound of Kevins phone receiving his text.

Aaron watches as the Foxes turn individually to throw Kevin dirty looks for not having his phone on silent.

Kevin, for his part, is slow to respond.

He seems to have to slowly tear his gaze away from… whatever he’s staring at, by moving himself bit by bit, like a puppet in reverse.

Gradually he comes back to life, reaching into his pocket to get his phone out, seemingly oblivious to the glare he gets from Nicky when he bumps him with his elbow.

Finally, he opens the text from Aaron: _Like damn at least the villain only wanted to kill one dude, how many henchmen have the ‘good guys’ just murdered?_

Aaron watches as he types out a response, oddly excited despite himself.

_IDK man, lost count around twenty_

Aaron huffs out a quiet laugh before quickly sending off another text.

_Should probs mute ur phone b4 Reynolds murders u_

Another notification noise, followed by Kevin fumbling to silence his phone.

To her credit, Alison did indeed look to be contemplating murder from her perch on Seths lap.

Aaron keeps up a running commentary throughout the rest of the film, fueled by the small smile on Kevin's face and the texts he receives in response.

______________________

Something Bee had been having Kevin do was make lists of the good thing in his life. 

He thought it was pretty easy at first, and had slapped down a list containing the Foxes latest win, a tricky maneuver he’d managed, and the profile of an incoming first year who showed excellent promise at Exy.

She’d taken it, given it a cursory glance over, and put it back down on the table.

“Now, Kevin,” she began in the tone of voice that signified Disappointment Incoming. “When I asked you to write down good things in your life, it was with the hope that you would write more… personal things.”

Kevin stared at her, bemused.

She pressed on.

“These are all good things, yes, but they are things that happen largely to your team, not to you directly.”

“But I got the maneuver!” he interrupted. “That was something that happened to me!”

Bee nodded gently.

“And that’s a good one, but do you remember how we talked about distractions and coping mechanisms?”

Kevin didn’t say anything, just watched her.

“Well, I think that while exercise is very good, and you are clearly physically healthy, you seem to be using sport to ignore what’s actually going on in your life to the detriment of your mental health.”

“But-”

Bee held up a hand, politely but firmly cutting him off.

“Kevin, you have made a lot of progress since you start participating in these sessions, but I think it’s been rather a case of plaster on a bullet wound. For next week, I want you to compile a list of things in your own personal life that you find positive or enjoyable. Try and avoid including sports related things, just things outside of Exy.”

Kevin looks lost.

“Why not get your friends to help you?”

“I don’t have friends,” saysKevin reflexively.

And he didn’t, not really.

Bee shifted in her chair.

“What about Andrew, don’t you two spend most of your time together? And you’re always practising with Neil, surely you two are friendly enough?”

Kevin sat back and considered it a moment.

Sure, he spent his time almost solely with Neil and the cousins, but he’d always felt… outside of them. He didn’t understand some of the jokes Aaron and Nicky made, and Nicky always said that it wouldn’t be funny if it was explained, so neither of them ever did. He thought for a while that Andrew was his friend because Andrew promised to help him with Riko but all he’d done was press a bottle into Kevins hand and tell him to drink. The only person Neil let actually close to him was Andrew, and they spent half their time conversing in languages Kevin didn’t speak. 

Though he has been getting relatively closer with Aaron the last while. 

(Less ten-foot-pole and more six-foot-pole)

Since the last group movie night, it was like some unspoken barrier had been lowered a bit between them. 

Aaron was more prone to including him in jokes and conversations, and they had been texting more. 

Bee seems concerned by his extended silence and gently prompts him with another question. 

Kevin blinks and looks at her.

“Sorry could you say that again?”  
  


“Of course,” she says pleasantly. “I asked if there was even one person on your team who you find you get along with better than the others. If it makes you feel more comfortable, please remember that what happens in this room stays in this room, and that none of the others will ever hear what goes on in here if you don’t want them to.”

Kevin nods slowly.

“I guess I get along pretty well with Aaron - or at least better than the others” he finishes.

Bee smiles happily, and jots down a quick note in her notebook.

“Now, why do you think that is?”

Kevin shrugs.

He isn’t sure if he even knew himself.

“I guess,” he starts. “I guess he helped me through a panic attack a while back, so he’s kind of already seen me at my most pathetic-”

“Now Kevin,” interrupts Bee. “We’ve been over this one.”

“I am not to refer to having panic attacks as pathetic because they are a normal response to being overwhelmed,” Kevin recites. “I remember”

Bee motions for him to continue.

“Well he helped me through that, but it just kind of made things awkward for a little while, because I didn’t really know if you’re supposed to thank someone for helping you through that sort of thing, and then when I was working on an essay for history, I lost time again and Aaron came down to the kitchen at one point and he said it was three in the morning and I tried explaining that I must have lost time and he said that that wasn’t really a thing and-”

Here Kevin pauses for a breath. 

It’s sort of nice to get it all off his chest, because these particular interactions with Aaron had been bothering him for a while.

“And then we were watching this film - like, the whole team, Dan said it was some kind of bonding exercise - and I wanted to show them this one particular film to the others because I really like it and I remembered what you’d said about trying to include other people in my interests outside of sport but then Nicky and them all started shouting over me and talking about how shi- how awful that film is and how there was no way they’d ever watch it again because it sucked so much and, well-”

Here he falters, unsure how to go on until Bee prompts him with a nod.

“I know it sounds… silly… but it, well, it hurt my feelings,” he finishes lamely, already feeling embarrassed for saying it aloud.

“That wasn’t very cash money of them, now was it?”

"I hate that Nicky taught you that phrase."

Bee gives him a wry smile and Kevin sighs, still feeling a little like he’d snitched to the teacher.

“And did any of them apologise?”

“No? Why would they?”

Bee puts down her notebook.

“Kevin,” she states firmly. “Regardless of whether or not you think of each other as friends, you are all still grown adults. That kind of behaviour is something I’d expect to find in children. Not grown men in their twenties.”

Kevin resists the impulse to remind her that Neil is actually nineteen.

“Did none of the others say anything on your behalf?” 

Kevin shakes his head.

Renee might have, but she’d been in the hallway having her ‘little chat’ with Jack.

“I mean, Aaron-” 

He cuts himself off.

Bee looks at him curiously.

“What did Aaron do?”

Kevin averts his gaze, suddenly weirdly uncomfortable.

“Nothing, he just, uh, he started texting me during the film we did watch. Just stuff he had to say about the film, I don’t think he liked it either but he didn’t want to get in the argument.”  
  


“He didn’t join in with the others when they protested your suggestion?”

Kevin pauses, thinking. The whole thing had that blurry, unreal feeling to it that came about when he was upset or someone started yelling at him. 

He shrugs.

“I don’t really remember it,”

“Didn’t you say this happened yesterday?”

Kevin nods.

“And you don’t remember it?”

Another nod.

Bee hums quietly and writes something else down.

Kevin watches curiously.

“Why did you write that down?”

Bee finishes what she was doing and looks to him again, her expression unreadable.

“Do you often have trouble remembering upsetting events?”

Kevin nods slowly. 

“Doesn’t everyone? Doesn’t everyone forget bad stuff? I thought that was… normal?”

Bee shakes her head.

“Not quite. It’s common in people who have survived trauma to repress memories so as to make it easier to cope with daily life, and this can include seemingly simple things like being shouted at or getting upset over someone's reaction. Have you experienced any other similar memory gaps or lost time?”

Kevin perks up at that last part.

“I don’t know about memory gaps, because it’s not like I forget the whole thing, but that it gets all blurry like when you have a watercolour painting and then you pour water down it and all the colour runs and gets blurry. But I do lose time occasionally, I just kind of check out and, uh…”

He stops, self conscious again.

He had never been one to really talk at length, Riko had always been the more dominant personality and at Palmetto nobody really put up with him talking for more than two minutes before they started complaining.

Bee nods as she finishes writing this down.

“Thank you, Kevin, this is all very important, thank you for sharing it with me. But I think we’re just about over time for today, so we’ll have to continue this next time, okay?”

Kevin nodded as he got to his feet, stretching slightly as he felt his vertebrae click and pop in protest of having sat still for the hour.

Andrew was waiting for him in the lobby, and stood when he saw Kevin emerging from Bees office.

“About fucking time, you are ten minutes late finishing.”

Kevin ducked his head, apologising quietly before following Andrew out to the waiting car.

______________

Aaron found himself watching Kevin in the weeks that followed.

He wasn’t sure why, he certainly wasn’t doing it on purpose.

He just found himself becoming aware how his gaze would catch on Kevin when he entered a room, when he spoke - hell, sometimes Kevin would be minding his own business, reading or working on his laptop and Aaron would only realise half a beat late when Kevin looked up and made eye contact that he was staring at him in the first place.

Like, before he’d never noticed how everytime he got a salad, Kevin would push all his tomatoes to one side and then transfer them to Andrews plate. Or how he was always moving to stand on Andrews left, where he used to stand when he was next to Moriyama.

He noticed other things as well, like how Kevin would flinch slightly if someone started talking to him unexpectedly, but if he was focused on something the whole building could burn down and he probably wouldn’t hear it. That his eyes would light up whenever he saw a dog, but he’d still go out of his way to avoid them.

Aaron didn’t really know what to do with any of this accumulated knowledge.

Some things stood out more than others, like how Kevin always seemed a beat behind a joke, looking to see if other people were laughing before joining in (in the rare instance he was actively participating in a conversation).

And that was another thing.

Kevin seemed to actively avoid talking to the others if the conversation wasn’t about Exy, to the point where he often straight up left the room if it looked like the topic wasn’t going to swing that way. It was the exact kind of thing that would have pissed Aaron off a year ago, but as he’d grown more used to Kevins weird habits, he’d stopped caring so much.

Like when Dan had suggested that stupid ‘group-bonding’ exercise and Andrew had forced their little group to join in because Josten had _asked_ him. Aaron had been perfectly content to use it as an excuse to drop his textbooks for the evening and crash out on one of the beanbags in the common room.

His plan was to fuck around on his phone for an hour or two, then go to bed, but Nicky and Neil had to kick up a huge stink when Kevin suggested they watch that buttons film again. 

Reynolds, who (to Aarons knowledge) had no actual knowledge of the film was quick to join in the protest until half the team was shouting down the suggestion.

For his part, Aaron had just watched this all go down from his beanbag, knowing that should he even bother to open his mouth that Andrew would have just sent him a death glare from where he’d been slowly burrowing into Jostens hoodie. 

Still, seeing how defeated Kevin looked had made Aaron uncomfortable in a way he didn’t really know how to process. 

It wasn’t like they were particularly close, but Aaron still counted him as a friend. 

(You can’t live with someone for almost two years and _not_ count each other either as friends or sworn enemies, he reasoned, and Kevin, though occasionally irritating, could never equate to a villain in Aarons mind.)

Seeing Kevin seemingly force himself to drop out of conscious awareness like that was worrying. It reminded Aaron too much of when his mother was hitting him, and he’d let his mind drift until it felt like he was watching himself from across the room, watching this strange woman beat a child who was no longer him until the onslaught stopped and the pain of his fresh bruises welcomed him with black and blue arms.

So, he watched.

_______________

There’s a weird buzzing in his ears still.

He’d tripped over an opposing defenders stick last night and smashed his head into the wall, and even though Abby had checked him out and said he’d luckily managed to avoid a concussion, there this buzzing in Kevins ears still that wouldn’t go away.

It sounds like there’s a fly stuck in his ear, but he’d poked it with an earbud and found nothing.

It’s annoying.

He keeps shaking his head like a dog trying to dry itself off after a bath and all he was achieving was pissing off Neil, who’s trying to get his latest assignment finished.

  
  


Aaron wanders into the shared kitchenette, intending on rifling through the cupboards to find something to snack on before dinner only to be greeted with Neil snapping at Kevin and Kevin slapping at his ear.

He’s prepared to turn tail and flee back to his bedroom, to hell with whatever bullshit this was when Kevin calls out to him.

“Hey Aaron-”

Damn it.

Resigning himself to his fate, Aaron trudges over to Kevin, eyeing the cupboards and mourning his snack.

“What?”

Kevin at least has the decency to look sheepish.

“Would you, uh,” he stops.

“Kevin.”

“WouldyoulookinmyearAbbysaidIdon’thaveaconcussionbutmyearkeepsbuzzingandIthinkI’mgoingdeaf”

Aaron stares at him.

“Slow down, try again.”

Kevin heaves a breath.

“Would you look in my ear?” he asks. “Abby said I don’t have a concussion-”

  
“What, after that guy tripped you? How the fuck not?”

Kevin shrugs.

“Hard head, guess I must have got it from my dad - anyways, she said I don’t have a concussion, but my ear keeps buzzing and I’m worried that I might have, like, burst my eardrum or something.”

Aaron heaves a world-weary sigh and scrolls through his mental list of ear-related maladies and traumas.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Tilt your head over, moron.”

Kevin looks confused, and Aaron lets out another truly impressive sigh.

“Which ear is buzzing” Kevin pointed to his left, scars on his hand standing out under the harsh fluorescence of the kitchen light. “Okay so tip your head to the-” Aaron stopped a moment to remember his right and left. “Right.”

Kevin starts to move his head.

“No, your right, dumbass”

“Oh”

Aaron gently takes hold of Kevin's head, tilting it to allow him to look at the supposed injury.

“Do you want me to sit on the floor so you can reach?”

“You do realise that if I were to slip just right I’d snap your neck?”

He felt Kevins head move as he swallows.

“Good, so hush and let me look at you”

Aaron squints, not seeing any visible signs of trauma.

Scrolling through the appropriate mental dialogue, he finds the line of questioning he’s supposed to follow for aural injuries.

“When did the discomfort start?”

Kevin makes as if to shrug.

“Don’t fucking move, man, just answer.”

“I don’t remember!”

Aaron sighs some more. (At this rate he was going to deflate like a balloon).

“Was it before or after Abby checked you over.”

Kevin hums thoughtfully.

“After, definitely after.”

“Did she comment on any bleeding from the affected area, or did you personally notice any trace of blood coming from the affected area?”

“Dude, just say ear”

“Shut up, Kevin, answer the question.”

“No, I did not notice any blood in my ‘affected area’”

Aaron takes a moment to ask any gods that may be listening for patience, then calls on his time working the till in Walmart and summons up his best customer service smile.

“Did you notice any - wait.”

Aaron abandons his sarcastic tone as a thought occurs to him.

“Were you on press duty?”

Kevin nods slowly against the hold Aaron has on his head.

“Did this happen before or after?”

Kevin pauses.

“After? I think? Yeah, because I didn’t have time to shower beforehand and I remember Nicky commented on my hair”

  
Aaron chooses to ignore the latter part of that comment, as he so often did when his cousins asinine behaviour is mentioned.

“So, did you notice the buzzing before or after you showered?”

“After.”

Aaron releases Kevin and steps back, causing him to turn to look at him quizzically. 

“You’ve just got water in your ear,” he states. “It’s gonna be annoying as shit for a few hours and you’re going to want to carve out your own ear, but you’ll be fine. Best fix is to just turn your head on the side and wait for gravity to do its thing.”

Kevin pulls himself to his feet awkwardly, wincing as his lower spine pops loudly.

“Jesus, was that your neck?”

Kevin smiles tiredly at him, still tilting his head slightly to the right.

“Nah, my back just kind of… does that.”

Seeing Aarons horrified expression, Kevin huffs out a soft laugh.

“Why? Did you see someone about that? Does it hurt?” 

Aarons horrified tone has Kevin laughing, a genuine smile stretching across his face.

“Nah man, it’s all good, it just happens when you grow too tall too quick - not that you’d understand”

Any sympathy Aaron has for the man is gone in an instant.

“Alright, fuck off! Not all of us inherited Coaches… behemoth-ness!”

“Behemoth-ness?”

“Shut up”

Despite his words, there’s a lightness in Aarons chest that he’s not used to, and the soft crinkle at the edges of Kevins eyes isn’t too bad to look at.

“At least I didn’t smash my head off a wall because I tripped over my own fucking feet”

“Fuck off! He tripped me-”

“What is going on here?”

And just like that, the good mood dies.

Standing in the doorway like a bad mood made manifest is Andrew.

  
  


Kevin feels the laugh die in his throat as he sees him, grin gone in an instant.

Aarons face shutters closed.

Gone is the teasing half-smile and laughing tone, replaced by his usual scowl.

Kevin watches helplessly as Aaron yanks something out of the cupboard and storms off, slamming his bedroom door shut behind him.

Andrew is watching him expectantly, as if waiting for an answer to what really wasn’t a question.

Coming up blank, Kevin just ducks his head and goes to get ready for bed.

  
  


Later, when Aaron has long-since given up on trying to sleep, and is instead laying awake listening to the soft breathing of a sleeping Nicky, he finds his mind fixating (as it so often seemed to these days) on Kevin.

On how… happy… he’d seemed in the kitchen.

How his face had lit up so completely when he laughed.

On how quickly that light had died when Andrew appeared.

Aaron rolls over in his bunk, fuming silently as he remembered how Kevins shoulders had slouched back down to his habitual stoop.

How all it had taken was five words from Andrew to make him crumble - make him _cower_ like that.

Fucking Andrew, ruining everything. 

Just like he always did.

God fucking forbid Aaron ever get to have anything nice.

God fucking forbid Aaron ever get to have an actual _friend_ for once.

The weight of his duvet suddenly stifling, Aaron kicked it off and rolled out of bed, hissing slightly at the feeling of cold wood on his bare feet.

He walked over to the tiny window, suddenly unsure as to why he’d gotten out of bed.

Outside he could just about make out the moon overhead, the light from the city blocking out the stars and catching on the underbellies of low clouds.

He’d always liked this time of night.

Growing up, his mother would have passed out asleep by now, and whatever hook up she’d brought home would have long since left, so Aaron would have the flat to himself. He’d sneak out of wherever he’d been hiding, steal food out of the kitchen and then dash back to his hidey-hole before he made any noise that could wake her up. 

By the time Nicky had adopted the twins, it was already an ingrained habit. 

Hoisting himself up awkwardly onto the windowsill, Aaron thought back to the first time Nicky had caught him stealing from the cupboards.

He had been so careful before this not to get caught or found out, but he’d forgotten about Erik.

To this day, every two weeks, like clockwork, Nicky would Skype Erik. These calls could last anywhere from two to six hours, depending on whether or not either man had had a particularly busy fortnight. 

Looking back, Aaron guessed that the reason they’d been so long back then was because Nicky was still trying to cope with suddenly raising two asshole teenagers on top of proximity to his bullshit parents, but at that point Aaron was still reeling from the death of his mother and Andrew forcing him through cold turkey withdrawal and he was, to be fair, a raging prick.

Regardless, he’d been so focused on keeping quiet, he’d neglected to notice Nicky sat at the table, and when Nicky had asked him what he was doing Aaron had jumped a solid foot and bolted out of the kitchen clutching the loaf to his chest. 

Present-day Aaron shifted uncomfortably against the hard wood of the window as he remembered running outside barefoot until he came to a stop somewhere in the scrublands down the back of their estate, panting and clutching the now-squashed loaf of bread to his chest like it was something precious.

He remembered limping back to the house hours later, after the sun had risen and he was pretty sure Nicky had taken Andrew to school, only to be met by a frantic Nicky sobbing down the phone to Erik.

Aaron had been so terrified as he walked back to the house, certain that Nicky would finally drop the whole ‘nice guy’ charade and hit him or lock him under the stairs or any number of the punishments Tilda and Luther had a shared fondness for, that when Nicky had rushed over to hug him, he’d flinched back so hard he had hit his own head off the doorframe.

It was the start of a steep learning curve for the pair. Nicky learned to respect that Aaron had his own demons in common with Nicky, and Aaron started to come to terms with the fact that, overbearing and loud though he may be, Nicky was a good person at heart who did care about looking after the twins.

Aaron had gotten out of the habit of stealing food and hiding it, but he’d never really gotten out of his shitty sleeping schedule.

Nowadays, he was generally only awake long enough to use the bathroom and go back to sleep, maybe check his phone was actually charging and that Andrew hadn’t unplugged it out of spite again, but sometimes it was like this.

He’d wake up and stay awake for a while, realise he was not getting back to sleep anytime soon, say _fuck it_ and then proceed to spend the next few hours killing time.

Sometimes he’d feel guilty about wasting time and try to get homework done, but more often than not he’d just mute the telly and play video games until the others started waking up.

Movement down below caught his eye and drew him out of his musings, and he looks down to see 

Andrew and Josten getting out of the car, talking to each other while Andrew lit a cigarette.

Momentary rage flares up in his gut, but he was too tired to really care. 

Let Andrew smoke himself and his idiot boyfriend into an early grave, see if Aaron cares.

(He does, despite himself, and that annoys him more than he’d like to admit.)

Pulling away from the window, Aaron hops down from the sil, his legs briefly unsteady before he regains his balance and ambles over to the door, half expecting to see Kevin sat in the kitchenette and typing away at some essay or the other.

The last one had had a weird title, he recalls as he pulls a glass out of the cupboard.

Something to do with - his brain blanked - something to do with die Ökonomie, Aaron couldn’t remember the English.

As he fills the glass from the tap, he tries to ignore the vague sense of disappointment at not seeing Kevin. Some part of him wanted to apologise for leaving so abruptly earlier, part of him refused the notion, Andrew could apologise for being an asshole in person. 

Part of him just wants to make Kevin laugh like that again.

It had been… nice.

There was no ulterior motive to the conversation, no agenda, no weird politics, just. him and Kevin, fucking around in the kitchen like the giddy college students they were supposed to be.

It had been fun, but then Andrew had to show up with that look of disgust, as if he couldn’t comprehend people having fun.

Kevin looks nice when he smiles properly, his _real_ smile, not that fake PR smile he put on in public.

He has a nice laugh too.

His attention elsewhere, Aaron lets his hand drift without realising, and jerks back as the tap soaks his pyjama sleeve, the glass slipping free and clattering into the sink, thankfully staying in one piece.

Paranoia makes his spine snap straight and for a solid moment he stares at the doors to the bedrooms, waiting for someone to storm out and yell at him.

Nothing.

Aaron lets out a breath.

It was an annoying fear response, the idea that holding your breath would somehow make it harder for predators to find you. 

Aaron knows this.

Aaron knows the exact reason for ingrained fear responses, and could point out the little part of the human brain that controlled them and even still.

Even still, as he sets about drying off his hands and refilling the glass (paying attention this time), he could not help but be annoyed that it was always his default response. 

Remembering the breathing exercises Bee taught him, he inhales deeply before holding it a moment and exhaling just as slow.

In… out… in… out… in-

“The fuck are you doing up?”

Maybe if he just didn’t turn around, he could ignore Josten and imagine he was still alone.

“Aaron.”

Fat chance of Andrew giving him that luxury.

He turns around to see Andrew and Josten shucking off their jackets, the closing door wafting the ugly smell of cigarette smoke towards Aaron.

Wrinkling his nose reflexively, he opts to ignore the pair, instead shoving past them into his room.

As he reaches his door, he hears Josten murmur something about how Andrew shouldn’t worry about it, that Aaron was just an asshole.

Biting back a retort, he let himself into the room (careful not to wake a still sleeping Nicky) and went over to his bed. Rather than actively get in and go back to sleep, Aaron instead pulls the pillow and duvet until he’d formed a little cocoon in the corner, pulling the duvet tighter and tighter until the pressure is a grounding comfort, holding him tight while he willingly succumbs to sleep.

____________________

Friday comes and Nicky is complaining because Andrew ditched their plans to go to Columbia in favour of fucking off somewhere with Neil for the weekend.

Kevin doesn’t particularly care either way, he doesn’t see the point in going to the club anyways when they could just stay in the Tower and drink there.

Aaron doesn’t seem particularly bothered either.

He’d been snappy with Neil all week, the two of them constantly sniping at each other, and Kevin was at his wits end.

He didn’t know what had happened between them to make them so outwardly hostile - hell, knowing those two it was just as likely nothing _had_ actually happened and that they were just in a mood to piss each other off - but frankly he doesn’t care.

So long as they don’t kill each other on the court, it’s not his problem.

What _is_ his problem is the way it’s affecting Andrew.

Andrew seems to have this weird correlation between ‘shit Aaron does’ and ‘shit Kevin does’ that meant that whatever one did, the other had to feel the ‘punishment’ as well, which meant Kevin had been dealing with Andrew giving him the petty silent treatment all week, refusing to let Kevin go to night practise, not letting him use the desk in their shared bedroom to do his assignments so Kevin had to resort to balancing his laptop on his knees on the couch - something which would be fine were it not for the fact that whenever he lost time, he’d forget about his laptop until the overheated fan was starting to burn him.

He’d reached his limit for Andrews petty bullshit days ago and now he’s just tired.

  
  


Aaron checks that Andrew had, in fact, left, before emerging tentatively from his room.

Kevin looks over from where he’s curled up on the couch and then back to the match playing on the TV.

“Coast is clear.”

Aaron relaxes despite himself, and flops onto the opposite end of the couch, trying to make sense of what’s going on on screen. 

It looks just slightly off, and he stares as he tries to work out what was wrong.

Too many players? Maybe? 

A glance at Kevin shows that his confusion is not shared.

Aaron slumps back on the couch, defeated.

“What’s up with you?” asks Kevin without looking away from the screen.

“Man, I don’t even know,” admits Aaron. “I think I’m having a stroke.”

A smile.

“And why is that?”

Aaron gestures vaguely at the screen.

“The fuck is up with this?”

Kevin makes a confused noise, and Aaron feels his hackles raise a bit.

“Like, I know it’s Exy but-”

“Aaron, this is hockey.”

Aaron stares at him.

“Dude, how did you not notice? They’re nothing alike?”

Aaron ducks his head, feeling a grin tug at his mouth despite himself.

“I just assumed-!”

Kevin's mouth is twitching, but he at least has the decency not to outright laugh.

Aaron flumps back into the couch cushions, feeling his cheeks heat up.

_‘Stupid fucking hockey dumbass fucking sport not even on the fucking ice what the fuck kind of hockey isn’t on ice.’_

Who even watches hockey anyways? 

Kevin catches him sulking and stretches over a foot to poke him in the side.

“Hey.”

Aaron ignores him.

“Hey, Minyard.”

Another poke.

“If I hadn’t of told you-”

Poke.

“Would you have even noticed?”

Aaron rolls his eyes but doesn’t grace Kevin with a response.

Kevin, now fully ignoring the telly and seemingly enjoying himself, goes to poke him in the ribs 

again, crying out in shock when Aaron grabs his ankle and yanks him forwards so that Kevin loses his balance and crashes off the couch, somehow managing to not knock every single thing off the table. 

The crash has Nicky racing out of the bedroom. 

"What the fuck just happened?" 

“Kevin fell.”  
  


The man in question shoots Aaron a wounded glare.

“You little liar!”

Nicky stares at where Kevin is still sprawled across the carpet in a rather undignified manner, his left leg still up on the couch and his head below the coffee table.

“Kevin?” he probes gently. “You okay, buddy? You need anything? A hug? A plaster? A dink?”

Kevin lifts his head and thumps it back on the carpet with a dull thud.

“Je veux retrouver ma dignité”

Aaron snorts.

“Hit your head a little hard there, Day?”

Kevin ignores him, wiggling until he’s able to get his feet under him, standing up a little too fast. 

The blood rushes out of his head and he shoots out a hand to steady himself as his vision blacks out for a moment. 

He stands still, waiting a couple of seconds for his eyesight to clear until the thing he’s leaning on shifts under him and a hand comes up to grip his wrist, prompting him to actually look down.

Aaron is watching him with an expression somewhere between startled, concerned and amused. Before Kevin can open his mouth to apologise, Aaron beats him to the punch with a “Damn Day, can’t even walk straight?”

_‘Haven’t you realised nothing about me is straight?’_ Kevin finds himself thinking, the urge to say it aloud so strong that for a moment he thinks Aaron did actually hear. Momentary panic prompts him to yank his wrist out of Aarons grip and, narrowly avoiding slamming his shin into the fucking coffee table, he makes a beeline for his room. 

Neil and Andrew are sat at opposite ends of the bottom bunk, both of them freezing momentarily. 

Kevin doesn’t miss how Neil, the one sat with his back to the door, flinches towards the wall slightly.

Kevin ignores the slight feeling of guilt that perks up at the back of his mind. Instead he forces himself to slow down in a hopeless attempt to _not_ seem like he was actively running away from Aaron and Nicky.

Given the snide mumble of ‘Der feigling läuft erschrocken davon,’ (which, yeah, he doesn’t understand, but he’s heard ‘der feigling’ enough from Andrew to know it isn’t _good_ ) he doubts the pair fell for his feigned nonchalance.

_‘Nothing ever goes right for me,’_ Kevin mopes, pulling himself up into his bunk, tucking his knees to his chest and rubbing his sore shin.

  
  
  


“So,” probed Nicky. “We gonna talk about how Kevin just _bolted_ out of the room?”

Aaron doesn’t like the way he’s smiling.

“Who cares? Dude’s got trauma up to his eyeballs and you’re telling me him freaking out because he accidentally fell on someone is weird.”

Aaron cares.

He doesn’t get why Kevin freaked out so much.

Hell, not even ten minutes ago they’d been horsing around, happy as you please, and it wasn’t even a week ago Aaron was listening to Kevin complain about ear-ache while holding his head in his hands. 

Had Aaron done something that pissed him off?

Maybe it was that he didn’t like touch? Certainly on a team like the Foxes, being touch-averse was far from unusual, but Kevin had always seemed fine with it? 

Part of Aaron wonders if Kevin had momentarily mistaken him for Andrew, it would explain the reaction, but Kevin hadn’t seemed _afraid_ of Aaron, more… embarrassed?

  
  


Nicky throws up in his hands in mock defeat, but lets the subject drop.

_‘Okay.’_

  
  
  


Done with moping, Kevin is now staring resolutely at his ceiling, his roommates long since fallen asleep.

‘ _Okay, we need to think about this rationally’_

God, but he’d rather just ignore it and repress it and wait for it to be over so he can flee the country and never have to think about his _emotions_ ever again, but he knows Betsy would be oh so _disappointed_ in him were he to go through with that plan (no matter how tempting it felt) and has instead resigned himself to walking through his _feelings_.

‘ _Okay, first and foremost: why did we flip out on Aaron?’_

Initial reaction to that question was easy, he could just pretend that in the moment between his vision clearing and seeing Aaron properly, he’d momentarily misremembered the situation and thought he was leaning on Andrew, a veritable death sentence 9.999999/10 times.

However, because Kevin is a fundamentally _good_ _person_ and has a _conscience_ that means he has to be _honest_ with people, especially those he (cares for? likes?) is friends with. 

‘ _And besides, Aaron hates it when people get them mixed up, you wouldn’t do that to him on purpose, that’s just mean’_

So, if it wasn’t because of any nonsense about mistaken identities, then why?

‘ _You know why,’_ says a sly little voice. ‘ _It’s because you_ like _him.’_

And that’s it? Isn’t it?

Kevin has known he was bisexual since he was thirteen and Jean came to the Nest with his cool accent and admittedly impressive Exy skills and Kevin had had to admit to himself he had a tiny bit of a crush on the guy. Cue the gay crisis until four years later when he’d first met Thea and he’d realised that, huh, he liked guys _and_ girls, who knew? Still, it had been drilled into his head for so long that ‘it’s easier to be heterosexual’ that he’d never felt the need to tell anyone about his sexuality. 

Make no mistake, it wasn’t through fear of being rejected by his teammates and friends, hell, as is he was pretty sure that Aaron was the only straight person currently on the team. 

And therein in lies the issue.

Kevin might not be the best at social cues and norms but he’s pretty sure that the idea of confessing your romantic attraction to your straight friend would probably put undue levels of strain on an already tenuous relationship. 

So, he had elected to ride out the crush until they graduated and moved apart. Distance would make it easier and then in time it would just be a fun ‘man, I used to have the biggest crush on you back in college’ story to tell at meetups or whatever.

And, honestly, now that he’s actively participating in therapy and isn’t going out of his way to antagonise people at any given moment, anyone would be lucky to be with Aaron. 

Kevin was lucky in that he didn’t have to worry about getting a job after graduation, or indeed graduating with any kind of decent marks. His future was secure. Aaron, on the other hand, was determined to become a pediatric nurse. He was constantly either studying or (when Nicky guilt-tripped him into taking a break) crashed out half-asleep playing video games until his body simply switched off and he fell asleep. He was dedicated to what he cared for, a trait anyone would want in a prospective partner.

Really, the only problem (as much as it is one) is that he simply doesn’t swing Kevins way (God but he sounds like Nicky right now).

  
  
  


Meanwhile, on the other side of the common room, Aaron is also awake, and having his own crisis.

His stupid brain got caught on the warmth of Kevins hand on his shoulder, reminding him over and over exactly how long it had been since he and Kate broke up, and that he was so very bi.

Initially, Aaron had just written it off as physical attraction, because there was no denying that Kevin ‘I’ve Been Playing Exy Since I Was In The Fucking Womb’ Day was attractive. 

Back before they joined the Foxes, Aaron had allow himself daydream about the illustrious sports star in detail, innocent stuff, things that were almost more embarrassing than if he’d just admitted ‘yeah sometimes I think about Kevin rawing me into the bed, what of it?’. 

Somehow that would have been easier to admit than his actual daydreams, which consisted largely of Aaron looking at a picture of Kevin shaking hands with some official and imagining what it would look like if Kevin held _his_ hand. What the dark brown of Kevins would look like cradling Aarons face. Or when he’d see Kevin giving an interview, all easy charm and grace next to Riko and Jean, and he’d daydream about making Kevin laugh like that.

Of course, then they had actually not only met Kevin but Kevin had started living with them, sharing a room with the cousins and ‘coaching’ the Foxes and Aaron had learned how much of his public persona was actually just a persona. 

Aaron nowadays could probably (if not a tad begrudgingly) admit that part of why Kevin was such a nightmare those first eight or nine months was because he was suffering severe mental and physical trauma and that, unlike the rest of them, his trauma was a literal fresh wound.

Still doesn’t excuse the fact that he was a raging prick and Aaron found himself switching from daydreaming about holding hands to picturing his own hands around Kevins neck and throttling the hell out of him from time to time. When he wasn’t on court barking out commands, he was cowering behind Andrew or dissociating on the shared couch.

He’d calmed down and settled since Riko had killed himself. The news had hit him hard at first, and Aaron was willing to bet Allison $50 that Kevin simply did not remember the majority of the summer that followed, too busy spiraling into grief and alcohol and burning himself out on the court. It wasn’t until Coach had caught him passed out in the corridor to Wymacks flat that he had confronted Kevin with an ultimatum: sign up for AA and get help for his addiction or he was off the Foxes permanently. 

Aaron had expected a fight, a row, some kind of argument or resistence, but apparently Kevin had simply agreed to his father's conditions, and had, to his credit, made a marked improvement in regards to his drinking.

In truth, it caused more arguments with Andrew than anything else.

Aaron had asked Nicky about it once, and Nicky had said something about how Andrew had made some deal or something with Kevin that involved Andrew giving Kevin alcohol anytime Kevin had a panic attack and in return Kevin would help Andrew get a spot on a National team or something, Nicky wasn’t super clear on it himself.

Where was he going with this?

Present-day Aaron huffs a bit and pulls his covers tighter around him, train of thought thoroughly derailed, before rolling over and going back to trying to sleep.

He’d deal with whatever it was he was meant to be dealing with tomorrow.

The next morning, Aaron has completely forgotten the events of yesterday evening.

Indeed, it isn’t until he looks up from his cereal to see Kevins t-shirt ride up as he stretches to put something in the cupboard that the full weight of his attraction crashes back down on him.

Nicky makes some tasteless joke about Aaron choking on his cereal, and Aaron briefly considers throwing his anatomy textbook at him.

(If it weren’t for the very real possibility of it giving Nicky a concussion, he might have done just that)

He sees Kevn open his mouth, (to join in or ask a question, he doesn’t know) but an alarm goes off on Kevins phone, and he starts, grabbing the phone and jumping to his feet, wobbling slightly before making for the door.

“Where you off to?” asks Nicky.

“Appointment!” is all they get and he’s off.

Aaron (who just _happened_ to be finished his cereal at that point moved to the sink and gazes out the window at Kevin climbing into a car with… Wymack? 

“Kinda cold for Kevin to call spending time with his own dad an ‘appointment’” muses Nicky next to him. “But, then again, it is _Kevin_ we’re talking about.”

Aaron hums quietly in response, preoccupied.

  
  


“So,” starts Wymack. “Nervous?”

Kevin looks at his hands, unsure how to respond.

Bringing up the topic to Wymack had been (weirdly) easier than Kevin had thought it would be. In truth, he’d expected Wymack to laugh at him and refuse to.. what? Support him? He didn’t even know what he thought would happen, but he certainly hadn’t expected it to go as simply as it did.

He’d brought up the topic one day after morning training. His next class wasn’t for two hours, so worst case scenario he had time to go hide in his room and not-cry for a while if it went badly.

He’d waited until the others were gone and the only Foxes left were Andrew waiting for Neil to be done in the shower.

Approaching the topic had been nothing short of terrifying.

Kevin was by no means small, but Wymack was both physically bigger than him and he had an unshakable presence, and the nature of his question would be difficult enough under normal circumstances.

“Uh,” he’d begun. “Coach- I mean, uh”

His hands had been shaking.

Wymack stopped what he was doing and looked up.

“Yeah?”

“I was wondering if, uh, if maybe you could-”

Maybe if he’d ran then the toilets would have been empty and he could have gotten sick in peace.

Wymack furrowed his brow.

“Do you want to maybe speak to me in the office? You look like you’re about to keel over”

Kevin could have passed out as he nodded gratefully.

The office had been a sort of safe space for Kevin since he joined the team as assistant coach, somewhere he could sit and vent about the players and know he was actually listened to. He didn’t trust Betsy at that point, had no way of knowing who she told things to, where her loyalties were. The Mas- Tetsuji had drilled it into them that you could never trust someone who claimed impartiality, especially therapists. That particular block had taken a long time to get through. Even though Wymack never promised not to tell anyone the things Kevin told him, he knew the older man would keep mum about things, without being asked.

Once in the office, Kevin had sunk gratefully into the ratty chair meant for visitors and explained, first too fast, then overly-slowly, choosing each word as though they were steps in a minefield. That Aaron had mentioned something, then Betsy had suggested something and how it had led to him finding a clinic halfway between Lexington and Columbia that would give him the answers he needed and would Wymack consider coming with him?

It was far from walking distance, and because he had no driving license it left him reliant on others for lifts constantly. He tried getting a bus once, purely to spite Andrew, and he almost had a panic attack because he couldn’t work out if he’d missed his stop or not. So, he was stuck relying on others. He got on well with Matt on the court, but they rarely interacted with each other elsewise, leaving his only real choices being Andrew-And-Neil (or, if they were feeling spicy, Neil-And-Andrew) or Wymack. 

(Technically he could also ask Nicky, but he’d ridden in Nickys passenger seat while Andrew was still medicated and it was an experience he would be happy never to replicate).

And so, here he found himself, Wymack a comforting presence in the driver's seat, waiting patiently.

“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”

Kevin sighs, then squares his shoulders.

“No,” and the confidence in his tone surprises even himself. “No, best get it sorted.”

He catches Wymack giving him a fond look and he ducks his head a little, self-conscious.

“What?”

“Nothing,” 

Kevin watches him shift a little in his seat.

“You just reminded me so much of your mother, just there.”

“Oh.”

They’ve spoken about her, from time to time. Kevin wants to learn more about her beyond her public achievements, and Wymack wants to remember the woman he loved and so, they talk.

They’re quiet for a moment before the ten minute reminder beeps on Kevins phone and they both snap into action, climbing out of the car in a flurry of coats and seatbelts and striding up the footpath to the brightly painted door.

Inside the walls are a soft cream and there are plants in every corner. There’s an office on the right, the wall between the two opening onto both rooms. The worn leather couches are mercifully empty, and Kevin eyes them up as he waits for the receptionist, Wymack a solid presence behind him.

“Hi there!”

He starts a little at the voice behind him.

They turn to see a woman standing there expectantly.

She’s neatly dressed, and seems at first glance to be about Nicky's height, shorter than Kevin without Kevin having to crane his neck to look down at her.

“Are you here for an appointment or would you like to make one?”

Kevin opens his mouth to respond, but his words won’t come out.

“He’s here for an appointment, under the name ‘Wymack’” rumbles the man behind him. “I called in a couple of days ago.”

She looks between them, comes to some kind of conclusion and moves on, addressing Wymack directly.

“And what is your relationship to-?”

She pauses.

“Kevin, I’m his father.”

“Right,” she sidesteps them neatly, snagging a form off the desk. “If one of you could please fill this out” she hands it to them, along with a black pen “normally the parent does so, but as you are clearly over eighteen, Kevin, you are perfectly free to do so yourself.”

Kevin accepts both off her, feeling more than a little out of his depth. 

In truth, he wasn’t expecting to be addressed, he had, in all honesty, expected to be spoken down to in that awful sing-song voice people use when they think there’s ‘something wrong with you’. Rather she seems to have found a balance between professional detachment and approachability and it makes a nice change. 

The people on reception at the clinic Betsy works in are standoffish at best and straight up rude at worst. They look at you with the virulent disdain one usually reserves for finding something unspeakable on the sole of their shoe and act as if helping you is an unnecessary task that they are frequently burdened with rather than, y’know, their job.

Being treated as human is a nice change. 

She leaves them alone for a moment and they move to the couch, Kevin already reading through the form and filling out details.

He’s able to fill most of it out easily enough, name, age, sex, existing relevent medical conditions, GP, etc. but then the box at the end draws him up short.

“Uh,” he mumbles. “It says emergency contact.”

Wymack lifts an eyebrow.

“Who do you normally put down?”

“Andrew.”

“Right.”

Kevin stared at the blank slot a moment, considering, and then hurriedly scribbled down Wymacks name and number, tilting the clipboard towards his dad as he did so, allowing him the option of sneaking a glance.

He doesn’t look to see if he notices.

Form filled, all that’s left to do is wait.

A text from Andrew comes through on his phone.

**Andrew:** _Where the fuck are you_

_Fucking answer your phone Goliath_

_Nicky says you’re w Coach?_

**Me:**

_W dad_

_Busy_

**Andrew:** _Where the fuck are you then_

**Me:**

✔️✔️ _SEEN: 11:57_

**Andrew:** _Did you just fucking text me ‘seen’_

**Me:**

✔️✔️ _SEEN: 11:58_

**Andrew:** _bitch-_

The door opens and Kevin puts his phone away.

He gives it ten minutes before Andrew throttles Nicky, and feels bad, but Betsys voice floats to the front of his mind, reminding him that he is neither in control of nor responsible for Andrews actions.

“Mr. Wymack?”

Beside him, Wymack moves to stand.

“Ah, sorry there sir, I meant your son.”

Kevin looks up, wide eyed.

Wymacks mouth moves silently a moment and then he stutters out that no, Kevin is Day, his mother's surname. 

The lady apologises but seems to take it in her stride.

There’s no ‘aha!’ moment where she connects sport prodigy Kevin Day, son of Kayleigh Day and striker for the top team in NCAA Exy to the lanky dude with a weird facial tattoo and shaky hands sitting in her waiting room.

It's surprisingly nice. 

Wymack nudges him gently and gestures to the woman waiting patiently in the doorway.

“Oh!” 

He catches on quick, holding out his hand.

“Kevin.”

She smiles at him and takes it.

“Helena, I’m to be the one assessing you today. Your dad has to wait out here, I’m afraid, but if you need him at any point just give him a shout and he’ll be right in, okay?”

All of this is delivered in that same, reasonable tone and Kevin is starting to think that maybe this won’t be so bad.

He’d danced around the topic until Betsy had copped onto what he was trying to get at, and she’d given him a broad overview of the process, enough to convince him that it was worth doing.

“I’ll be right here, Kevin.” 

Wymack sits back down, looking up at him encouragingly..

The woman, Helena, clears her throat.

“Ready to go in?”

He nods and hands his phone to Wymack before following her into the room.

It’s oddly shaped, is the first thing he notices. 

The room is shaped like an L, with another couch, this one white, tucked against the wall on his immediate right and a low partition dividing the long side of the room in two. Around the corner is a small office looking space, with a desk and a computer behind two ceiling-to-floor curtains that can be pulled over to block off the space. Finally, in the right hand corner by the window is another desk, this one with a chair either side. There’s nothing on it, but there is a box on the floor beside it and behind it are a pair of filing cabinets.

Helena gestures for him to take a seat in the chair in front of the cabinets and he perches on it carefully. 

The room is brightly lit, the fluorescent lighting amplified by the white walls, white floor, white desk. It’s all a bit overwhelming, and Kevin finds himself blinking a lot, fixing his gaze on Helena's green sleeve, his own dark hands splayed out on the surface.

“Okay!” starts Helena brightly. “So, I need to clarify one thing with you first.”

He looks at her quizzically.

“The purpose of todays assessment is not diagnosis, you’ll have already been diagnosed as part of the referral process. Regardless of how things go here today, your diagnosis will not change. I’m mentioning this because often I find people stress unnecessarily over the idea that they need to ‘prove’ their autistic, and that if they somehow ‘fail’ this assessment, that that diagnosis will be stripped from them. I can wholeheartedly assure you that this is _not_ the case.”

Kevin nods uneasily, squinting slightly against the harsh light.

Helena keeps talking.

“We’re going to go through a series of exercises to see what accomodations you may need, this would be of help for things such as assignments, exams, etcetera, as well as helping you figure out ways to make day to day life easier.”

“Easier?”

“Well, is there anything at the moment that you find you have more trouble with than the people around you?” she probes gently. “This could be things like sensitivity to sound, disliking certain textures-”

“I forget.” 

She arched an eyebrow.

“Forget what?”

“I cover it up a lot because it’s easier than, uh-” he cuts himself off, mentally rewording his next sentence. “People get frustrated with me if I forget things so I make a lot of reminders on my phone but then _that_ annoys Andr- annoys people too because my phone goes off so much.”

She nods thoughtfully.

“What kind of things do you forget?”

He sighs, mentally scanning through a checklist of things he can tell people _not_ involved in the yakuza.

“Little things mostly,” he says, thinking. “I have an alarm on my phone to get up and then a list of things to do, like I forget to brush my teeth sometimes because I’ll brush my hair and then the two things are so similar that I forget I haven’t done one-”

“-because obviously you’ve done it?”

“Exactly.” 

He’s nodding now, feeling more comfortable.

“Wymack had to make the appointment for today because I kept forgetting, even though I knew I had to do it and I’d pick up my phone to do it but then I’d forget what I was doing and… yeah.”

He trails off lamely, ending with a self-conscious shrug.

“I don’t understand people,” he adds. “Like, someone will make a joke and it’s fine but I try to do the same thing and it’s awful so I stop trying.”

“I see.”

“And my, uh, my-”

And there’s the thing. 

How does he address Riko? 

His brother? Foster brother? 

“I grew up with a foster-brother, and we were together constantly, you see, so I never really had to do things by myself. In, like, social situations we were told what to do, what to say, and if I was stuck I just copied Ri- copied him. Now I’m on my own and I don’t have anyone I’m that close to, not really, so I have to figure things out as I go and it’s -”

“Exhausting?”

“ _Yeah,_ ”

She smiles at him.

“Well, Kevin, today you don’t have to worry about anything like that.”

She pulls the box up onto the table and pulls out a book, one of those ones that has a built in stand and lays on its side.

“I’m going to go through a series of exercises with you in this book. They’re all different, and some of them I’ll explain to you, some of them you’ll have to figure out as part of the exercise. Do you understand.?”

He nods, unconsciously flexing and clenching his left hand.

“Right, now-” she turns over the first page to reveal four almost identical pictures. “This is one of the easier ones. I need you to tell me which of these is different. The picture will likely change each time, and I might ask you why you pick certain things, okay?”

“Got it.”

This is easy, he reasons, odd one out, he can do it.

  
  


Turns out there are rather a lot of exercises, and combined they are exhausting.

One of them involved a bizarre amount of sums, and at one point Kevin had to stop himself from announcing ‘I’m bi! You can’t expect me to know _maths_!. He’d needed pen and paper for that one, and by the time they were done his left hand ached.

“Okay, Kevin, we’re finished with the book, time to move on.”

He watches as she pulls a piece of laminated paper out, and then place four blue blocks in one row, and four red ones in the other.

“Right,” explains Helena. “Your dad mentioned you play sports, right?”

“Uh,” Kevin blinks at her. “Yeah, Exy.”

He doesn’t mention that his mother invented it.

“Great! So you’d be quick to pick up and copy movement, right?”

“Yeah”

“Cool, so I’m going to tap these in a specific order, and I want you to try and repeat the pattern for me. Easy as breathing.”

He nods and flexes out his hand, already focusing on her hand movements as she gestures at the blocks.

“Ready?” 

He nods curtly, and she starts.

This one is easier by far, and Kevin is able to copy every pattern she follows, quick and precise, years of doing that godforsaken cone drill coming to the fore, ignoring the building headache behind his eyes.

“Very good, Kevin,” smiles Helena when he completes the last one. “Do you find you like memory games or games where you have to follow a pattern?”

“I don’t know,” mused Kevin, thoughtlessly cracking the knuckles on his left hand by bracing each finger against his left thumb in succession. “I play videogames with my roommates sometimes, and I used to play chess with-” a pause “-with my foster brother.”

“The one you spent your time with?”

“No,” he cuts her off, then tries again, softer. “No, this one joined us when we were thirteen.”

“Well,” she says, moving on smoothly. “You’re almost done here, just two more exercises and then a few questions and we’re all set.”

With that, she pulls out what looks like a children's book from the box. The cover announces something alliterate about aerial amphibians.

“Now I know this one might seem a bit childish, but bear with me on it. I need you to read out each page as I show you them, and then after each page I’ll ask you something about what’s going on on the page, okay?”

Kevin nods stiffly, feeling his eyes ache a bit as he focuses on reading out the words and answering questions, mostly about what he thought the characters might be feeling, what they were doing etc.

All the while the lights seem to get brighter, his headache more pronounced until it feels like his head was in a vice.

Trying not to grimace, he watches blearily as Helena reaches back into the box, pulling out a small pouch. Inside are a handful of tiny plastic objects, about the size of the novelty things you might get in a christmas cracker, a small pink high heel, a bright yellow feather, a dinky, a green marble and a little candle complete with an orange flame.

“Okay now,” Helena says, reaching for the objects and pushing them towards Kevin. “Make up a story using these objects.”

Kevin stares at them, clenching his hand.

“Kevin?”

He blinks at her.

“Could you make a story for me? I know it feels a little silly at your age, but don’t worry about that.”

“But-” he gestures helplessly. “How? What story?”

Helena gives him an appraising look.

“Try and make up a story that involves these objects, what kind of things might these represent?”

Kevin feels close to tears, his head throbbing so hard his vision was starting to go dark at the edges.

“But there isn’t one!” he insists. “Look I just-”

As he speaks, he reaches out, pushing all the objects back into line, then continues to push them around until they were in order of tallest to smallest in the middle of the desk.

“I don’t know- I don’t _understand_ ”

Helena sits back in her chair.

“That’s alright, Kevin, you’ve done very well. Are you alright or would you like to take a minute?”

‘ _Selfish_ ’

He tries to ignore how much the little voice sounds like Riko.

“No,” he clears his throat. “No, no I can finish. Please. I want to finish.”

She doesn’t press the subject, sweeping the items back into their pouch and placing it carefully into the box before placing the whole lot on the floor. As she does, Kevin can feel his heartbeat return to normal.

“Now,” 

And with that she launches into a variety of questions, regarding everything from household tasks, (“who does the cooking?” “one of my roommates, mostly.” who does the cleaning?” “we’re all responsible for keeping the common areas tidy, or else Andrew, one of my roommates, gets angry”) to finances (“do you have your own job?” “uh, I did, before- I don’t want to answer this one” “okay”) to relationships (“have you been in a relationship?” “yeah I had, uh, I had a girlfriend for a couple of years but we split up” “why do you think people enter relationships?” “uh…”) and finally about his routine (“well, we have a pretty strict schedule and then in our free time we have a pretty predictable routine” “and do you like having a strict routine?” “of course I do, who wouldn’t?”).

“Wonderful job, Kevin,” Helena smiles at him. “All finished now, thank you.”

He nods, trying to massage his temples as inconspicuously as possible.

She escorts him over to the door.

“Why don’t you go wait with your dad, and I’ll be out in just a second.”

In the waiting area, Wymack is flicking disinterestedly through a magazine, his knee bouncing rapidly, but when he sees the door open he stands up straight away.

“Well?” his eyes flick between Kevin and Helena. “All good?”

Kevin nods, suddenly exhausted. 

“If you’ll both just wait here, I’ll be back in half a second with further details.”

Wymack watches Helenas retreating back with a vaguely confused expression.

“Further details? What’s she talking about?”

Kevin shrugs, knowing he should be paying attention to events, but really he’d rather just drink himself to sleep and forget about everything for a while.

Wymack looks at him, assessing.

“Do you want to go wait in the car? You look ‘bout ready to collapse.”

“Honestly, I’d rather play Edgar Allen and USC back to back than go through that again anytime soon.”

“That bad?”

“Not bad,” he amends. “Just tiring, like, emotionally.”

“Car?”

“Yeah.”

As he turns to leave, he stops, rotating on his heel, head drooping from the sudden dead exhaustion.

“If she, uh-” he yawns. “If she says anything about another date, will you try get one on a weekend we haven’t got a game, please?”

“Sure thing, kid.”

  
  
  


By the time Wymack gets into the car, barely five minutes later, Kevin is already asleep. 

The sound of the car door closing jostles Kevin, and he watches as he blinks blearily, talking around a yawn.

“Dad?”

Wymack feels his heart contract.

“Yeah?”

“Didja remember to-”

Another yawn.

“Didja remember to ask? About the date? The games?”

“Sure did,” Wymack struggles briefly, pulling off his coat and draping it over his son. “You just get some sleep, I’ll wake you when we get home.”

Kevin is already asleep.

  
  


He wakes briefly, hours later, and is only vaguely aware of time moving in moments; being gently cajoled up a staircase and into a familiar flat, a rough hand gently cradling his head as someone puts a pillow under him, a soft duvet being tucked in around him before he’s out for the night.

  
  


When he wakes in the morning, it’s to a momentary confusion before he recognises the duvet tucked up against his chest.

He doesn’t fully remember getting home yesterday, but strangely he doesn’t mind. 

His head feels a million times better, and he’s deliciously comfortable, sleep-warm and soft on Wymacks old couch. 

But, of course, he is Kevin Day after all, and that means it’s probably written somewhere that it’s illegal for him to be happy. 

No sooner has he realised where he is and taken a moment to enjoy it, his phone buzzes angrily from where it’s plugged in across the room and he sighs, rolling off the couch and disentangling himself from the duvet.

He takes his sweet time crossing the room, stretching leisurely and taking a moment to tug his t-shirt into place from where it had ridden up as he slept. 

When he finally pads over to his phone, he has 78 notifications, mostly a variety of texts and missed calls from Andrew, a handful from Nicky, one from Neil telling him to answer his fucking phone, and then a series of sporadic texts from Aaron. 

He opens the ones from Aaron first.

**Aaron:** _Dude where u @?_

_Andrews losing his shit_

_Like not rlly_

_He’s just pissy_

_U don’t need to worry or smth_

_Is kinda funny acc_

_U ever seen that lil vein stick out on sum1s head b4?_

_Kinda wanna throw peanuts @ him_

_Kinda wanna not die_

_Woah is almost like ur a grown ass adult out for the day w his dad_

_Crazy ikr_

_Aw man he smashed my mug :(_

Kevin wonders which mug he means, the ‘Worlds Okayest Doctor’ one or the blue one that Aaron loves using when he’s cold because he can fit both hands around it perfectly without the handle being uncomfortable.

He checks the texts from Nicky next and is greeted with a veritable Rosetta Stone of emojis and scattered words. Rather than slog through the back catalogue, he just skips to the most recent ones.

Given the context of Aarons texts, it’s not hard to work out that Nicky was just recounting the same events, albeit in a slightly more theatrical manner though tinged with guilt from spilling the beans on where Kevin was, as apparently the mention of an ‘appointment’ had only frustrated Andrew more.

**Nicky:** _Srry_ 😔 😔 😔 

_I didn't think_ 🤔 🤔 🤔 _he'd freK out_

😖😖😖

📱 _Me_ 🤡 

_Get home soon ya_ 🏡 _🚙 💨_

**Me:**

_Nb_

_I could have written him a wholeass letter_

_Gotten Wymack to sign it and all_

_He’d still lose his shit_

**Nicky: 😂 😂 😂**

_Tru_ 👏 👏 👏 

_U home soon?_

**Me:**

👍

He pointedly avoids opening the litany of texts from Andrew, sends a single middle finger emoji to Neil, and shoves his phone in his pocket.

Noise in the kitchen alerts him to Wymacks presence and he turns and slouches over, squinting a little bit after the glare of his phone.

“Breakfast?” 

He hums in lieu of an answer, pulling out his bowl from the cupboard and fishes out a spoon.

He’ll make his way back to the dorms when he’s good and ready.

  
  
  


God, when is Kevin coming back.

Aaron’s not an idiot.

Kevin left with Coach to go to some appointment and then, (shock horror!) spent the rest of the day with his father.

But Andrew, being as he is a raging asshole, can’t let people have nice things.

He’s watching Andrew chainsmoke on the back porch, his annoying shadow right next to him, as usual, when the text comes in from Kevin.

He opens it reflexively and laughs.

“Whatcha got there?” asks Nicky. 

He shows him the text.

“Oh my god, Andrew is going to kill him”

But he’s holding back laughter as he says it.

  
  
  
  


Indeed, it’s not until their morning training session on Monday morning that Kevin has to face Andrew.

Well, ‘face’ is a bit of a strong word.

He ignores Andrew silently fuming by Neils side during the morning briefing, and then pointedly asks Matt to spot him on weights.

Matt looks vaguely unsure for a second before his naturally sunny nature kicks in and he agrees with a nod and a smile.

Still, even when he moves onto the treadmill and Neil tries to needle him with pointed questions and accusations of him vanishing off the face of the earth he simply turns up the music in his earphones and keeps running.

  
  
  


Aaron catches up to him as he’s leaving the gym.

“Hey man,” he greets him. “What’s going on?”

Kevin flashes a grin at him before facing forwards again.

“Nothing really,” he drawls (and since when did Kevin _drawl_ ). “Just felt like making Andrew sweat.”

Fair.

“Straight up though,” continues Aaron. “I thought he was going to, like, fucking waterboard us if we didn’t-” he waves his arms around “-like, magic up a location or information or something.”

Kevin tilts his head back and laughs, the sun shining on his face and oh, but isn’t that a wonderful sight.

Aaron allows himself a moment of staring dreamily at Kevin before looking back down at where he’s taking two steps for every one long stride Kevins taking.

“So,” he clears his throat. “How did it go then? Anything interesting.”

Kevin tosses him a glance, looking oddly fond, before he faces front again.

“Nah, not really. Probably wouldn’t have been all that bad if the lights hadn't given me such a headache. I just had to do some basic exercises.”

“Yeah, what does that actually mean?” Aaron asks. “I could probably have, like, fucking googled it or something but I just, could _not_ be fucked to do so.”

Huffing out a laugh, Kevin gives him a brief, if colourfully punctuated explanations of the kinds of tests he had to do.

“By far,” he muses. “By far, the weirdest one I had to do was, like, I can’t even describe it.”

He gestures vaguely.

“Y’know?”

“Kevin Day, everybody.” 

“Fuck off!”

He shoves Aaron playfully.

Aaron laughs and bumps him back, prompting Kevin to turn and stare directly over Aarons head.

“Hello?”

He looks down at him in mock surprise.

“Why, Aaron!” he proclaims theatrically. “I did not see you there!”

“I will bite your fucking kneecaps off.”

Kevin winks at him and Aaron does not know how to process this.

He mumbles a half-hearted ‘fuck off’ before checking the time on the big clock embedded in the wall of the library.

“As much as your company delights me, I have to fucking leg it to my next class if I don’t want to be late.”

Kevin wrinkles his nose.

“Where are you going?”

“The Lynch building.”

“That’s literally not even that far?”

Aaron scoffs.

“Your legs are literally halfway to my elbow, you mammoth bitch, we’re not all six foot tall.”

“Six one, actually.”

Aaron debates throttling him, but decides against it (he hasn’t the time to hide a body).

Kevin squints off into the middle distance before shouting to Aarons retreating back.

“I could give you a piggyback?”

Aaron doesn’t even respond, opting to throw a middle finger over his shoulder as he jogs away to the sound of Kevin's laughter.

  
  
  


Needless to say, Andrew is fucking pissed.

The second Kevin steps in the door after class, he’s confronted with a ball of rage and blond hair.

It’s kind of impressive, really, how long it took Andrew to try and grab him by the throat.

He’d been listening with a vaguely detached interest as Andrews face grew redder and watching that little vein that Aaron had mentioned in his text as it throbbed in his forehead when Andrew pauses for breath.

Taking his chance, he sidesteps the guy smoothly and makes his way to the kitchenette, slapping the switch for the kettle as he goes, pulling open the mug cupboard.

Movement in the doorway and Andrews standing there, furious. 

“Do you want tea?”

“Are you fucking kidding me-?”

And he’s off again.

It’s unusual for Andrew to yell for so long, he must’ve been worried.

Maybe, Kevin thinks to himself, if he’d actually listen to and trust his family for once, he’d not have worked himself into such a state.

Andrew’s still going as he rifles through the cupboard looking for his mug, noting with some relief that Aarons blue one is intact, and he makes a mental note to try and find another ‘Okayest Doctor’ one for him.

The kettle comes to the boil and he calls out directly over Andrews head if anyone wants anything. 

Neil has tagged in for Andrew, yelling about sacrifices and the mob-

“Excuse me,” cuts in Kevin. “ _You_ got _us_ indebted to the _yakuza_ , not the _mob_. Have some respect man.”

It’s pretty funny watching Neils face turn the same colour as his hair.

Kevin waltzes by him, holding his mug over his head like he was surrounded by particularly yappy dogs, nodding to himself, trying to work out what the song stuck in his head was.

“Where the fuck are you going?” demands Andrew. “You just take off without a word and then show up like nothing happened-?”

“Oh fuck _off,_ Andrew!” he rolls his eyes.

Shockingly, the pair shut up.

“I not only told Aaron and Nicky that I had an appointment, I told _you_ , _directly_ , that I was with Wymack.”

Neil opens his mouth, clearly gearing up for a rant, but Kevin holds up a finger, shutting him up.

“I am not finished yet, _Josten_.”

Neil looks shocked at his own compliance.

“I am older than both of you, I _certainly_ have a better relationship with my father than either of you-”

Aaron whistles from his place on the couch.

“Low blow dude, we don’t even know _our_ dad”

“My point stands.”

There’s a choked off laugh from the couch and he doesn’t have to look to know it’s Aaron.

“-so the fact that you couldn’t bother your _ass_ to not only not trust me, but to not trust _Wymack_ , is fucking disgraceful. I truly cannot think of a _single_ moment where you have done _anything_ that is genuinely beneficial for me. I asked you for help and all you did was make me a fucking alchoholic, man, what the fuck?”

Andrew bristles.

“I helped-”

“Dude, full offense, but if I wanted to become an addict I have more than enough money to do it properly.”

Aaron is definitely laughing, and the fist in his mouth is doing jackshit to muffle it.

Neil shakes off whatever spell Kevin had cast on him.

“All he wanted to know was where you were, man, why is that such a problem for you? Just saying ‘appointment’ and leaving it be? How could he not think the worst? The fuck kind of problem even was it?”

Kevin sighs, full-bodied and with every last bisexual bone in his body he rolls his eyes to the heavens and back.

“I literally _cannot_ emphasise how much that is _none_ of your business. I’m not sick. I’m not dying. That’s all that matters.”

He pauses to take a sip of his tea.

“Now, if any of you want me, I’ll be in the common room, reading my book, and minding my own fucking business. Good. Bye.”

  
  
  


The door slams shut behind Kevin and Aaron takes a solid moment to savour the expressions of absolute shock on Andrew and Jostens’ faces, before he throws back his head and starts cackling, laughing until tears run down his face and he falls off the couch, still laughing.

  
  
  
  


Kevin makes it to the common room before sinking down into his favourite armchair and wheezing out a breath, feeling the tension leave him in a rush.

Strangely, the panic doesn’t come.

He’d expected a raging panic attack, but instead his hands are just shaking from leftover adrenaline.

Hysteria bubbles up briefly and a single laugh escapes his lips, prompting a glare from where Seth is hacking through an essay in the opposite corner.

“Fucks up with you?”

“He yelled at Andrew!”

Aaron chooses that moment to come bounding into the common room, flopping down dramatically on the couch.

Seth pushes away his laptop, curiosity thoroughly piqued. 

“No shit?”

He actually sounds impressed.

“And he’s still intact?”

Aaron looks like every major holiday (the fun ones at least) has come at once.

“Kevin!” he breathes out, eyes dancing. “Oh, Seth, dude, I wish I’d recorded it, it was beautiful.”

“Oh?”

Seth is grinning too, and their mirth is starting to pull at the corners of Kevins mouth as well.

“So, like,” Aaron starts. “Remember how Josten fucking eviscerated Rat-bitch at the banquet last year?”

“Yeah?”

Aaron slashes his hand through the air.

“That had _nothing_ on this, like, straight up.”

“Damn Kevin,” Seth leans forwards, holding out his fist. “If it was as good as he says then you’re, like, my hero or some shit.”

Kevin ducks his head bashfully, but meets the fist bump.

Aaron flops back on the couch.

“God, I’m so pissed I didn’t record that.”

“Why didn’t you?” asks Seth. 

“Because he was deepthroating his own fist trying not to piss himself laughing.”

“Kevin!”

Seth scoffs. 

“Damn, Day, you’re full of surprises today, huh?”

Kevin doesn’t respond, just quirks an eyebrow and takes a sip from his mug.

Aaron looks over at him, head tilted at an odd angle.

“I’m liking this new spine on you, Day.”

And if it comes across a bit flirty, well.

There’s no harm in that.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this in January and only finished it in October and genuinely wouldn't have finished it without the wonderful [sweetlikesugar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetlikesugar/pseuds/sweetlikesugar) helping me and laughing at my stupid jokes
> 
> also: if you're wondering what kevin says when he falls off the couch, "I would like my dignity back"


End file.
